A Traveller’s Eye, A Thinker’s Heart

I like to tell stories. I like to take photos.
And I like to share them. Enjoy.

  • THE SINGIDA MORNING MARKET

    THE SINGIDA MORNING MARKET

    Sweetpotato leaves wilt quickly. Theyโ€™re harvested in the early morning and usually consumed by nighttime. We wanted to see them nice and fresh so we ventured to the Singida market as the sun rose. We found leafy green vendors, Domina, Rahel and Mwasiti, setting up shop. They pulled out African nightshade, amaranth, mustard greens and…

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  • NJUGU

    NJUGU

    Esther Yoham Majija wanted to make her bakery, the Fortlene Bakery, a step apart from other bakeries in her town of Babati, Tanzania. She wanted to use traditional African vegetables in her baked products. The mother of three visited a booth of the World Vegetable Center at a trade fair and learned of different ingredients…

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  • THE SEA FARMERS OF WADEYE

    THE SEA FARMERS OF WADEYE

    Theodore Kormin-Kormin Dooling was pretty stoked about getting his commercial fishing license. He showed it to me with all the pride he could muster and somewhere underneath that long thick beard I sensed a smile. There’s now hope in Wadeye, an Aboriginal settlement about an hoursโ€™ flight down the coast from Darwin. Thanks to support…

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  • RECLAIMING FONIO

    RECLAIMING FONIO

    Itโ€™s one of the oldest cultivated crops in Africa but you’d be forgiven if you’d never heard of fonio. I had heard of fonio’s many qualities but had never seen nor eaten it. That’s changed now. I travelled to Benin with my colleague Scott Christiansen to learn more. Stakeholders in Benin led by the Crop…

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  • CRINCRIN

    CRINCRIN

    I never thought I’d enjoy eating green mucilaginous slime. But I did. Jute mallow is a favorite with the Beninese who call the crop crincrin. It’s an annual leafy crop grown in many places around the world. Its leaves are rich in pro-vitamin A, iron, calcium, and vitamins B and C. Those are important in…

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  • AGOUN FOR LUNCH

    AGOUN FOR LUNCH

    The city Dassa-Zoumรฉ is about half way between Cotonou and Natitingou in Benin and pops up just about when your stomach starts to grumble during the day-long trip. Our colleagues, Malika and Sam, knew just the place for lunch and we stopped in at a roadside kitchen for a feed. Malika said something about yams…

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  • BY THE RIVER OF DEATH

    BY THE RIVER OF DEATH

    The mouth of the Ouรฉmรฉ River in Benin was historically quite a treacherous place with dangerous currents which took many lives. Yet the settlers and traders built a fishing village at the mouth and that village has now grown to be Beninโ€™s largest city. French colonists liked the location and stablised the currents and built…

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  • FROM ALEPPO TO JOONDALUP

    FROM ALEPPO TO JOONDALUP

    Good friends are hard to come by; endearing friends even harder. But for those of us who lived and worked in Aleppo, Syria in the early 1990s friendships can be eternal. Our friends from our Syrian days, Scott and Andrea Christiansen and their daughter Caya, are visiting Padma and me. And our friends Joop and…

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  • KARIJINI

    KARIJINI

    If youโ€™re a redophile then Iโ€™ve got just the place for you. Head to the Pilbara region of in the north central part of Western Australia. Iron ore country.  The landscape glows with deep reds and earthy ochres. Iron deposits layered over 2.5 billion years. The red ancient banded iron formations are among the oldest…

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